Blood Is Thicker Than Water
Episode 3 of Black Butterflies starts with Albert continuing his story in 1978. A group of teens follow the sound of a crying baby to a grave, where the babe happens to be there all alone. Adrien is back at Albert’s place again and with Nora gone for a while, it gives the pair time to verbally spar over their ideals and past. Adrien opens up about his history, including how he ended up in prison. He went to Thailand to box but he wasn’t very good. He could throw a good punch but taking one? Not so much. Adrien then spent three years at a training camp in Chiang Mai before heading back and working odd-jobs. He enjoyed working in a nightclub but his real passion and itch came from writing. Adrien also admits some of his dark side, including beating a man to a pulp in a fit of rage. This instance, however, allowed him to get into the psyche of his character and, interestingly, introduced him to Nora as well. Albert breaks things up with a loud burst of flatulence. It’s an unintentionally hilarious bit of comedic levity, but it’s soon dissipated when Albert admits it’s happened since the doctors took out his gallbladder. Albert decides against speaking more about his story, too weak to go on. Instead, we return to Adrien and Nora, with the latter returning from her work trip with Alan. Adrien is drunk and lashes out at her colleague, before turning his attention to Nora. He brings up how Alan is a dangerous man with wandering hands and they’ve been texting each other a lot, swimming in jealousy… and the darkness in Albert’s story. Nora manages to calm him down, telling her partner that there’s nothing untoward going on. Eventually this leads to the pair making love. Carrel wakes up on a bench, where he’s saved from some youths by Mathilde appearing. He tells her he’s waiting for confirmation and that everything will be over soon, but his riddle-speak confuses her as she doesn’t understand what he’s referencing. Our story does eventually continue though when Adrien returns to Albert the next day, where we see a younger Albert washing off the blood from his hands outside a caravan. It’s still 1978 and another week vacation allows Sol and Albert to get their hands dirty. Or bloody, if you will. Albert and Sol have issues and that comes from the elephant in the room. That elephant happens to be their child, which Albert sees as a distraction to what they’re trying to do. This ties in nicely with the opening scene of the episode, with Albert leaving the child in the graveyard. He was between six months to a year at the time… but there’s a problem. The story is interrupted by a neighbour called Yves who shows up at Albert’s door. However, the editing cleverly adds this in alongside Carrel showing up at the door. As we soon come to realize, this encounter with Carrel occurred the night before. Carrel points a gun at Albert’s head and invites himself in. As Albert looks in his eyes, he realizes that the man appears to be his own son, the one he left in the graveyard. Carrel can’t bring himself to kill his alleged father though and instead drowns his sorrows in alcohol after knocking him out with the butt of his gun. When he takes his eye off Albert, the latter regains consciousness and smacks the guy upside the head and kills him. Wrapping the body in a tarp, Albert struggles to take his body outside, before eventually dumping him in the cellar.
The Episode Review
Old habits die hard, or in the case of Albert, not at all. After a bloody history of killing through the 70’s,the past and present collide together in surprising fashion for this episode, which manages to bring Carrel’s storyline into that of Adrien and Albert’s in a clever and surprising twist. The reveal that Carrel was actually Albert’s son – at least from what we’ve seen in this episode anyway – is a nice way of contextualizing the past and reinforcing that every action has a consequence. Meanwhile, the present timeline with Adrien coms into view in a shocking way as he lashes out at Alan, Nora’s colleague, in the same sort of way Albert would to Nora’s lovers. It’s a good example of how one can become immersed to the point of losing one’s self, and Black Butterflies has done a good job of showing that thus far. This psychological thriller has been quite the ride and while the show is a tad slow at parts, on the whole this has been a really solid watch.
